An under-appreciated user base for tablets is musicians. I can't speak to other genres but in recent years in the classical music world, a ton of professional and amateur musicians, and private tutors, have made the switch from paper sheet music, towards tablets. Most of the marketing around iPad and other tablets seems to target visual art, video editing, music editing, etc. But where a tablet may be a nice supplement to a desktop/laptop for those uses, it is a total game changer for sheet music since it can replace folders upon folders and boxes of sheet music which people have to lug around all over, and no other form factor can replace paper.

The iPad Pro, 12.9" has been by far the most popular model which, paired with the ForScore app (https://forscore.co/), lets users easily read and annotate sheet music.

What's interesting about THIS release for the sheet music use case is that, anything less than the 12.9" screen is just simply too small for reading music off of, full stop. 11" will not do. But musicians have been forced to fork over way too much money for the grossly overpowered pro model because it was the only one with the largest screen size. With this release, finally musicians can purchase a more appropriately-powered and appropriately priced 13" iPad Air, with a base model going for $800 rather than the pro model which starts at $1400.

However, for what it's worth, after doing a lot of research for my purchase I ended up going with the Samsung Galaxy S9 Ultra which actually sports a whopping 14.6" screen, allowing you to view two pages of sheet music in landscape mode. It also comes with the pen included for the price of about $765 USD. Samsung also makes available a cover which has a really cool origami design that allows you to prop up the device in portrait mode, which I haven't seen on any other tablet (https://www.samsung.com/ie/mobile-accessories/galaxy-tab-s9-...). This is actually perfect for sheet music reading! You can get by playing around the house without even a music stand, since you can just let it stand on its own. I was cautious about going the non-standard route with the Samsung rather than the iPad but I have to say I am quite pleased with the result, having used the tablet for practice every day for about a month. ForScore isn't available on Android but I have loved working MobileSheets (with https://www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/) which is actually cross-platform (windows/mac/android/ios).

I'm just a hobbyist myself, but it removes a lot of friction in my daily practice, private lessons, and rehearsals. I'm currently studying out of 3 different study books, as well as some scale studies, then some random duets, and then some "just for fun" pieces like the Halo game soundtrack. Then my orchestra has pieces. Using the app allows me to instantly navigate between all these much more easily than on paper, and I don't have to remember which books/pieces to take to lessons/orchestra/practice, everything's there all the time.

Plus, the ability to annotate music non-destructively lets me make better progress. I'm more willing to highlight tricky spots to remember what to focus on. Or, if I'm working through an etude book, I can annotate/re-annotate what tempo I practiced it at, so I can make sure I'm slowly making progress increasing speed.

Sorry for the long rant, all this is just to say that tablets for musicians are super awesome! There are also other benefits, like for instance with a tablet, you can get a bluetooth foot pedal which allows you to use your foot to turn pages which can be a challenge during performances (piano performances often even have a human page turner sitting beside the performer). Some people even use facial gestures like winking to trigger page turns.

This person has also done a lot of research on different tablets and produced a great report https://www.tablets-for-musicians.net/best-tablets/